Marie Ferrarella - Their Baby Girl...? - The Baby Mission / Her Baby Secret

What’s more irresistible than a gorgeous , sexy man? What’s more adorable than a sexy guy and a cute, cuddly baby?

Two lucky women might get to have both in

THEIR BABY GIRL…?

Two bestselling authors deliver two

compelling, emotional stories.

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humour and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

The Baby Mission

MARIE FERRARELLA

Her Baby Secret

VICTORIA PADE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Patience Smith

and our bonding process

MARIE FERRARELLA

She was back. He’d seen her. Seen Claire.

Held her.

Her eyes were closed now, but she knew it was him. He knew she knew. Because Claire was his.

Now and forever.

He’d been away for three long, aching years and when he’d finally been allowed to return, he was afraid that he’d never see her again. That she would be gone.

But he had found her, found Claire. No one else would ever have her again. Would ever touch her again.

There were no words to do justice to the emotions that were skittering through him. Elation, joy, empowerment, those were all good words, but not really good enough. Not nearly good enough to begin to describe what it was he was experiencing right at this moment, just looking at her lying here on the grass.

He sifted a strand of her hair through his fingers. Bending down, he closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply.

Her hair smelled of something herbal. Something nice.

Silky blond hair.

Hair that would continue to grow even though she no longer would. She wouldn’t have the promise of another sunrise, another star-filled night.

He sat back on his heels and looked at her.

She looked so beautiful.

In his other hand, he held a rose. A single, perfect red rose. A rose as perfect as the young woman who lay here before him.

There were bruises on her throat, which marred that perfection. But he had hidden them. Nobody would ever see.

Carefully he placed the single red rose in her hand, then arranged the fingers of her other hand around the stem. He sat back and studied his handiwork.

She looked as if she was sleeping.

Perfect.

The pressure in his chest was gone. It felt good to be back.

To have Claire again.

Because he loved her.

Chapter 1

“Guess who’s back?”

Special Agent Chris Jones, C.J. to her friends, looked up from her desk, the same desk that had kept her a virtual prisoner in the Southern California office for the past two months. She struggled against a very strong inclination to frown.

By the tone of her partner’s voice, her completely free-to-work-in-the-field-while-she-withered-on-the-vine-in-the-office partner, Special Agent Byron Warrick was either going to give her more paperwork to cope with, or worse, he had something going on in the field that she was barred from. The powers that be didn’t think a pregnant woman belonged out there.

Bracing herself, she tossed her long, straight, blond hair over her shoulder and asked, “Who?”

Warrick perched on the edge of C.J.’s desk and looked down at her. All of her. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a week, and every time he was away from her, he had to admit it was a shock when he first saw her again.

He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her this way. When they had first been teamed up, she’d weighed scarcely more than his equipment bag for the peewee softball team he used to coach. The last couple of months had certainly taken their toll on his partner.

He shook his head. She dressed well, and there was a certain amount of camouflage involved, but there was no way she could hide what was going on.

Warrick stole a peppermint from her desk and began to remove the cellophane. “You know, C.J., I can’t remember what you looked like when you weren’t pregnant.”

Why was it that men felt compelled to bury affection in a sea of banter, barbs and teasing? There were times when Warrick acted just like one of her brothers.

“Very funny.” C.J. sighed, then admitted, “Neither can I.” She pushed the keyboard back on her desk. Something was clearly up. “Okay, what has you so all-fired chipper this morning?”

“Not chipper, C.J.” Under the circumstances, that was rather a disrespectful word to apply to the situation, but then, she didn’t know yet. “Just energized.”

He played out the moment, reeling C.J. in. He felt bad for her, knowing how she felt about being stuck behind a desk. But he also felt relieved. Her reflexes had to have slowed down in this condition, and he didn’t want to have to be worried about something happening to her if she tried to go about business as usual. Business was definitely not as usual.

“Remember our old friend, the Sleeping Beauty Killer?”

Recall was instant. C.J. stiffened. The Sleeping Beauty Killer was the name she had dubbed the serial killer who had killed twelve women over the space of two years. All his victims were blue-eyed blondes, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. The name had been given him not for any missives the killer had left in his wake, but for the way he had arranged all the bodies postmortem. He strangled his victims, put a costume jewelry choker on them to hide the marks on their necks and then lyrically placed them on the ground with their hands folded around a single long-stemmed, perfect red rose. The women all appeared as if they were just sleeping, waiting for their prince to come and wake them up with a kiss.

Except that no kiss could undo what he had done to them.

Ordinarily, since all the murders had taken place in the vicinity of Orange County, the FBI wouldn’t have gotten involved unless requested to do so by the local authorities. But victim number two had been found in the parking lot of the federal court building. That made it a federal case and gave the Bureau primary jurisdiction. She’d been the first to come aboard.

Capturing the Sleeping Beauty Killer had been C.J.’s own personal crusade, one that had gone unfulfilled. The killings had abruptly stopped three years ago and the trail had gone completely dry.

The drudgery of the morning with its data inputting was forgotten. C.J.’s eyes brightened as she looked up at Warrick.

“Are you sure?” She made no attempt to hide the eagerness in her voice. If the serial killer was back, that instantly increased their chances of finally getting him for all the murders. “As far as anyone knows, he’s been out of commission for three years.”

The unofficial theory was that someone had turned the tables on the Sleeping Beauty Killer and killed him. Serial killers rarely lost the blood lust, so the abrupt termination hadn’t been voluntary. C.J. had spent countless hours scouring the crime databases herself, looking for any murders that had been committed using a similar MO. But none had come to light. Eventually C.J. decided, with no small relief, that although she wasn’t the one to bring him to justice, chances were that the Sleeping Beauty Killer was answering to a higher power for his crimes.

Obviously, relief had been premature, she thought.

“Take a look at what just came in.” Separating the photograph from the rest of the folder he was carrying, Warrick tossed it on her desk.